Today's pickup truck is a very versatile vehicle that can be used for work as well as play. Pickup trucks may be particularly suited to the task of towing. They may be suitable for towing other vehicles, boats, campers, horse trailers, equipment and the like. In each of these applications, a hitch may be required to attach the load to the truck.
Several styles of hitches may exist. Bumper mounted ball hitches may be useful for lighter loads, but for heavier loads the hitch may be located in the bed of the pickup just above the rear axle. For instance, a popular style of bed mounted hitch system may be known as a “gooseneck” hitch. A gooseneck hitch may employ a ball and socket arrangement where the hitch ball may be mounted in the bed of the pickup and the socket may be part of the trailer. This arrangement may be very common on horse trailers, among others.
The substantial weight of a loaded gooseneck trailer may require proper loading and mounting of the hitch assembly. Where the typical pickup truck is employed as the tow vehicle, the hitch ball may be secured in the bed of the pickup truck above and slightly in front of the rear axle. Typically, the mounting perhaps may need to be located not too far forward of the axle to avoid unnecessary bending moments about the axle. Moreover, the hitch ball generally may not be mounted to the rear of the axle, otherwise the tow vehicle may tend to rear off of its front wheels, possibly resulting in loss of steering control.
Recently, the popularity of the short-bed pickup truck has grown. Here, there may be a decreased distance between the rear axle of the pickup truck and the cab. In such cases, the proper mounting of the hitch ball often may result in an inadequate clearance distance between the forward portion of the trailer and the truck cab. In order to achieve adequate clearance, the tow hitch may be moved rearwardly in the bed, behind the rear axle. However, as noted above, this may create an undesirable and potentially dangerous towing configuration.
To address this problem, the coupling extension of a trailer may be angled so that the trailer extension may be joined to the hitch ball in front of the rear axle, while the front of the trailer may be displaced from the back of the cab with sufficient distance to allow the trailer to safely clear the cab during turns. Examples may be shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,890,728, granted Apr. 6, 1999; U.S. Pat. No. 6,186,530, granted Feb. 13, 2001; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/939,468, filed Nov. 13, 2007; and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/098,327, filed Apr. 4, 2008; each hereby incorporated herein by reference.
However, the trailer coupling systems utilized in these examples may have several drawbacks. For example, these trailer coupling systems may require top-down coupling, wherein the trailer extension may need to be set at a certain height, the hitch ball may need to be positioned relatively precisely directly under the trailer extension, and the trailer extension may need to be lowered vertically to engage the hitch ball. This procedure may require a fair amount of operator skill to carry out, and in any case may be relatively time consuming. Moreover, the trailer coupling systems described in the examples may be relatively heavy, perhaps tending to decrease towing efficiency, and may contain a relatively large number of moving parts, perhaps tending to increase manufacturing and maintenance costs.
The foregoing problems related to conventional trailer coupling systems may represent a long-felt need for an effective solution to the same. While implementing elements may have been available, actual attempts to meet this need may have been lacking to some degree. This may have been due to a failure of those having ordinary skill in the art to fully appreciate or understand the nature of the problems and challenges involved. As a result of this lack of understanding, attempts to meet these long-felt needs may have failed to effectively solve one or more of the problems or challenges here identified. These attempts may even have led away from the technical directions taken by the present inventive technology and may even result in the achievements of the present inventive technology being considered to some degree an unexpected result of the approach taken by some in the field.
Additionally, while the foregoing discussion has used the concept of pickup trucks and trailers to exemplify various problems of conventional ball and socket coupling arrangements, these problems of course may be present in a great variety of applications employing conventional ball and socket coupling arrangements, not limited to just pick up truck embodiments or even just towing applications.